Roughly forty percent of households in America own at least one dog. When every dog wants to kill you, that forty percent seems awfully high.

Philadelphia psychologist Doctor Lucas Miller was bit by a poodle on a cloudy October morning. Cursing his misfortune, he just chalked it up to an instance of bad luck. After being attacked by two more dogs in the same day, Lucas Miller accepts the undeniable truth that every dog who smells him wants him dead. Well, him and anyone unfortunate enough to get his smell on them. Trying to figure out why this is happening to him and how to stop it, he has no choice but to search for answers in a city of over a million of people...and thousands of dogs intent on his murder. Collecting a hodgepodge of eccentric

characters who have accidentally acquired his scent, these survivors set out together on an epic journey to end the increasingly bloody nightmare.

With horror and humor, suspense and emotion, MAULED is a volatile novel of blazing action, vivid characters and plot twists that only Christopher Grosso can deliver.

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Excerpt:

“Did it lock on when it bit you? I hear that some dogs will lock their jaws onto whatever they bite and you can’t get them to release.”

“I’ve heard that too but no, this dog bit and let go and I stumbled back into a parked car. The thing lunged again and missed by sheer luck. I didn’t do anything on that second attack. The damn dog just had bad aim and missed the mark. How could I do anything? I was still too surprised that this white fucking poodle bit me to even recognize the severity of the situation. But then it lunged a third time, aiming for my injured leg and I had just enough time to get a bit of my senses back. So I kicked at the thing with my other leg. My foot caught it on the nose, grazed it really, but it was enough that it backed off a few feet and gave me time to figure out what the hell was happening.”

“How did you kill it?” Gwen said, growing impatient with my tale. Since I only had a minor wound, she
didn’t need to hear every painstaking detail. Gwen wasn’t one that needed all the finer points of a story, just the gist. “How did you kill the dog?”

I held up my middle finger like an angry trucker. “With this.”

Gwen made an audible gasp. “What?”

Keeping the finger raised, I said. “I got away from the parked car and was backing up, keeping the dog
squarely in front of me. After kicking at it for the fifth or sixth time to keep it away, I tripped over the curb and fell backward. So the dog made an attack for my throat. My one forearm blocked its body just enough that its teeth couldn’t get my throat.” I wiggled the middle finger I held up in the air. “So I took this finger and shoved it into its eye. I just pushed and pushed until this finger was so deep inside its skull I couldn’t see the finger anymore. Then I twisted and dug and moved this finger around in his skull till the goddamn dog stopped moving.”

Gwen vomited on the kitchen floor.
A thought occurred to me: If we had a dog of our own, I bet it would’ve tried to lick up the vomit.
Dogs eat puke. Nasty animals.